Poems

I wrote a great deal of poetry in my teens and twenties. The muse has been a less frequent visitor since. In 2010 I stood to be Oxford Professor of Poetry and came in a respectable – at least I thought it was respectable – eighth. I wrote a series of pieces for the Guardian about the election:
www.theguardian.com/books/stephen-moss-for-oxford-poetry-professor

I gave some public readings of my poetry at that time and was not thrown out of the venues, though a friend (sic) of mine at university who got a first in English literature once told me my verse was among the worst he had ever read. Undaunted, I reproduce a small number of my poems – all of these are elegies in one way or another – below.

Also, here is a spoof poem ‘First Lines’ I wrote for the Guardian in 2009 to mark National Poetry Day:
www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2009/oct/07/national-poetry-day-moss-poem

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EIGHT ELEGIES

I remember I promised never to forget

I remember I promised never to forget.
But what
is forgotten.
I remember a bright face,
alive
and vivid as a cloudburst.
Fine features and wide eyes.
I remember the attraction
of an unforgettable face.
Or just another piece of faded,
jaded memorabilia.

---

Will you be there when I die?

Will you be there when I die, Joe?
Will you know what to say and why?
You have never known yet.
Will your old and bony face
touch mine?
Your stone hands
cool my head
as I decline?
Heaven without you is no heaven.

---

To David, whom I scarcely knew

No one tends the flowers outside your window.
They have grown stale in the sun.
The neighbours have noticed your absence,
but only for a moment.
“It puts it into perspective,” someone said.
A useful phrase.
You are dead and we’re alive.
That’s the perspective.

---

For V

Who will look after her
when she’s old and poor,
and no one wants her
bon mots any more?

---

Hope

There was a bright-eyed girl on the Tube the other night.

Young. What? About 17 I suppose.
With a friend.
They talked very fast
and with great animation.
There was also a party of scouts.
Nothing odd here, except,
as I noticed when I looked at a young West Indian,
there was something wrong with their eyes, all their eyes.
Each of them was blind.
Born blind? Black blind.
They laughed, exchanged jokes,
staggered about as the Tube drew in,
shuddering.
So different: the born-bright girl,
the blind black boy.
But so alike: in laughter and in love.
In their laughter, and my love.

---

How I despise you

How I despise you
and your cool beauty.
You let me breathe
and believe.
Then left me
bare and burning,
like a rock
on the surface of the sea.

---

Poem on the Times

Who are you
Child of Louis MacNeice?
Silent and still
Killed by a world you never saw.
Ageless, for never born.
Stageless, you never lived.
Guiltless, you could not sin.
Breathless, yet breathing life.
Your inception made news.
Victim of a terrorist’s bullet.
Killed before birth.
Supreme irony and good for circulation.

---

I was married to a beauty

I was married to a beauty,
flighty, thirty,
flirty, flutey.
I was boring,
she was baring
men were staring.
Rooty-tooty was my motive.
I was haughty,
she was naughty.
She was pouting,
I was doubting,
Men were shouting
the odds,
the sods.
Said it couldn’t last.
It didn’t. Blast.